


Fighting Instincts

by DragoJustine



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-11
Updated: 2008-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragoJustine/pseuds/DragoJustine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Don't ask me what they were fighting about; I haven't a clue, but the exact argument doesn't seem important.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Fighting Instincts

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me what they were fighting about; I haven't a clue, but the exact argument doesn't seem important.

He saw the punch coming a mile off -- of course he did -- but it's not like that made it hurt less. Daniel's fist connected, full force of his shoulder and rotation of his upper body behind it, and Jack's head snapped sharply to the side. Pain blossomed out from the impact, sharp sting on the skin and twinge in the neck and throbbing ache in the cheekbone underneath.

He carefully turned his head back to front, met Daniel's eyes again. Didn't lift his hand to rub his face. His left eye was watering a little. Jack breathed carefully, like he could force the adrenaline rush triggered by physical confrontation out of his system by pure force of will. 

Daniel just stared at him, dumbstruck. All the wound-up tension had left his body while Jack's head was snapped aside, leaving him slumped and bewildered looking. 

"Jesus. What the hell?"

Jack just raised his eyebrow. Daniel threw the punch, now Daniel was asking the question in that dazed, betrayed tone. Of course. He didn't need any words to point out the ridiculousness there.

"That wasn't some kind of sucker-punch, Jack. I telegraphed that." 

Jack just shrugged.

"There's no way that should have connected. You could have had both hands tied behind your back and it wouldn't have connected. You could take me in a fight blindfolded." 

"What do you want me to do, brag about it?" 

"Why," Daniel said, tensely and without the intonation of a question. Then, "Let's get you some ice." 

"I'm fine." 

Daniel gave a single pointed shake of his right hand, so Jack abandoned the lie and followed him into the kitchen. 

In front of the fridge, Daniel paused, hand on the door and face turned away. "Do you get off on pain?" he asked, the question all in an awkward rush.

"No," Jack said. "I really don't." After all the dodging and evasion in the argument, all the areas marked 'There be Dragons' on the complicated map of his relationship with Daniel, it was a relief to face a question he could answer with instant and complete honesty. 

Daniel pulled a thin towel out of a drawer by the sink and scooped some ice into it. "I wasn't supposed to actually hit you." He flipped the towel closed with a few deft twists and handed it over to Jack, who pressed it to his cheekbone. No point in adding the mother-hen act to the list of things they were arguing about. Daniel was no prizefighter, but he wasn't a weak man either (anymore -- no, never was), and less swelling was less to explain to Frasier. 

"And yet." 

"I committed to the punch so you would know I-- I meant it. I was serious, this isn't just something you can brush off or trivialize. Not to hurt you." Daniel acted like that wasn't the most obvious thing in the world, like Jack might conceivably need it explained to him.

"And then what? I grab your arm and twist you into a hold, or just dodge aside like it's nothing. And that's supposed to make you _less_ angry?" Because leaving Daniel feeling impotent and ineffectual personally, as well as unappreciated and ignored professionally, would have been the worst possible outcome at that moment.

"I know your reflexes. That wasn't just lack of action, that was a conscious decision to take it." 

"Could we maybe return to the actual point?" Jack manhandled a chair out from under the table one-handed and sat. 

"Irrelevant," Daniel said with an unconcerned shrug. Just wiped the last six hours of building resentment and angry sniping into oblivion by unilateral decree. "The basic disagreement is insoluble, and you were right in this instance, which you shouldn't take as a concession on principle." 

Insufferable man.

Daniel had spun another chair around to straddle it; now he crossed his forearms over the back and propped his chin on them, fixing Jack with a disconcerting stare. "So you would take one hell of a punch just to keep me from getting frustrated." 

"Would do it again," Jack said. "Will it help? Go to town. I've had worse." 

It was meant to be lighthearted, meant to be a joke and a brush-off. It wasn't. It wasn't, and the minute Jack heard the tone of his voice coming out of his own mouth, he knew it wasn't. 

Daniel heard it too, and his breath caught audibly. He swung off the chair and stood with strange care, like he didn't trust his own legs to hold him or the dingy linoleum not to lurch and tip him to the floor. He was watching Jack like the Rosetta Stone, like the meaning of life library, like the impossible perfect answer to everything that might vanish if he tore his eyes away for even a moment. 

"Do you even know what we've been fighting about?" Daniel gently pulled the ice away from Jack's face and let his fingers slide over Jack's damp, cold skin. Looking for the bruise, evaluating the swelling. The touch sent faint shocks of pain and aching through Jack's nerves. He didn't move.

"Some idea. Didn't think you knew, though." 

Daniel's hand slid lower and further back, until his hand cupped Jack's jaw and his long fingers ran over the soft hair at the nape of his neck. He pressed their lips together, a firm and unhesitating kiss.

The shocks from that were white-hot, and Jack moaned a little before he could suppress it. Daniel dragged their lips together, all pressure and the slight drag and rub of chapped skin and the first hint of the wet-heat of his saliva on Jack's lower lip. He didn't even try to press Jack's lips apart. Jack's entire world, the whole of his physical awareness, pulled in to that single point, that intensity of sensation and aching want. 

Daniel pulled back then, and looked at him. "Not a good idea," Jack ground out, with the uneasy feeling that he was saying his line, hitting exactly the cue Daniel had given him. 

"Come to bed." Daniel's voice was low and husky, and the pads of his fingers massaged tiny circles into the tension at the back of Jack's neck.

Jack just started at him, willing him to understand. A thousand things: frat regs and command responsibilities and a lifetime of repression and ruined friendships and basic common caution and team dynamics and all the careful boundaries that made this hierarchical structure work. Every self-preservation instinct he had was screaming at him to get well out of physical intimacy distance, to explain the situation tactfully but without room for argument, to get out of Daniel's apartment. 

But Daniel had never met a boundary he was willing to accept, and Jack's self-preservation instincts hadn't flinched at taking that punch, and it felt like the entire world was tilting off its axis. 

"Come to bed," Daniel repeated, firm and insistent and without even a single note of uncertainty or pleading in his voice. His hand closed a little harder around the back of Jack's neck, and something in that slight shift brought his thumb to the outside edge of Jack's fast-rising swelling. In that flash of pain, everything became very clear for one single split-second. 

Daniel's hand flinched away from the tender spot almost before it had really connected, and Jack felt that moment of clarity slide away. He breathed deep again and paused just long enough to drop his melting ice in the sink. Then, carefully and deliberately, he followed Daniel into the bedroom.


End file.
